


Stopwatch

by teleen



Series: Bedroom Games [8]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 20:21:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teleen/pseuds/teleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto finds more than just the obvious uses for his stopwatch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stopwatch

Timing orgasms was blasé. Timing orgasms while one of them was standing on one foot was only slightly better. Seeing who could get the other one off faster got boring fairly quickly.

More slowly, on the other hand, definitely had its appeal.

When Ianto had told Jack that there was quite a list of things to be done with a stopwatch, in reality he hadn’t been able to think of many.

At first.

How long could they kiss without one of them (nearly always Ianto) needing to pull back for breath?

How long could Jack’s hands remain on Ianto’s body without losing contact?

How long until Jack found Ianto in the Hub and why the fuck did Ianto let him get away with cheating every time?

Probably because the ‘penalty’ for being caught was Jack trying to see how long he could blow Ianto before he passed out.

Ianto had all the numbers in his head, from seven seconds all the way up to seventy-one days.

That’s how long Jack was gone with the Doctor and once he was back, well-

It was sixteen hours before they had sex. An hour after that before Ianto had any clue of how bad it had been or how bad it was going to be.

Eight days before Jack slept next to him in bed even though they’d been regularly sharing one before Jack had gone away.

Eight nights before Jack let him see the nightmares.

Twenty-one nights before Ianto could risk waking him without a fist to the jaw.

Ianto made a list of triggers and the different ways they went about getting over them.

Timing how long Jack could stand it when Ianto stood behind him, breathing softly on his neck.

Timing how long Jack could bear to remain bound with Ianto teasing every inch of skin he could reach with fingers and lips and tongue and palms.

And the longest time of all, the time it took Jack to finally tell him what happened.

Sometimes the times between incidents seemed so long that Ianto thought that Jack was over it for good.

Life is never so kind and there were times when the triggers piled one on top of the other so quickly there wasn’t even time to stopwatch them at all.

He kept the lists up to date and marked off when it had been a week, a month, a year since the last flinch from his hand just there or the last nightmare when Jack whimpered in a certain way in his sleep.

There were infinite nuances to Jack’s pain and Ianto Jones learned them all, something inside him hoping that if he could just chart it out and figure out where all of the triggers were, he could protect Jack from all of them, forever.

It was foolish of him to think that way, he knew that, but he did it anyway.

Jack needed him to find the answer, to figure out what could make him the same Jack who had gone away or at least to help him pretend to be that Jack in front of the others the best he could.

Ianto made sure that no one saw the cracks.


End file.
